Twenty years ago when the national lottery was first set up I had a Hogarthian vision of the poor holding sodden lottery tickets in the shadow of the Royal Opera House, throwing away everything on a few random numbers while the rich revelled in yet more revivals of The Ring. I thought this was a pernicious, surreptitious new tax on the poor and would lead them to gamble their lives away, encouraged by a grinning Noel Edmonds and Anthea Turner. How wrong I was.
The national lottery has been a success. There are moments to forget such as the concrete cowpat of the Millennium Dome, the pop museum in Sheffield, the Doncaster Earth Centre and the money sent to Peru to encourage people to